Movie review: Utopia

A scene from Utopia.

Criticising John Pilger is a dangerous game.

Those who object to his style in work such as the bootlicking 2007 interview with Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez are labelled opponents of his substance.

For the record, I admired the underlying intention of this passionate documentary about the deceit, brutality, neglect and hostility of Australia's treatment of its aboriginal population.

Whether it's a particularly good film is another matter entirely.

Even allowing for Pilger's legendary pompousness and self-regard, his hectoring and grandstanding remains as grating as ever.

In interviews with officials and politicians he is often more intent on histrionically skewering them than teasing out the issues.

He also plays dirty and cuts from an interview with a former minister of indigenous affairs to a document that seems to make him a liar, but fails to put the document to the minister.

Pilger slyly implies that the Howard Government's infamous "intervention" (aka the Northern Territory National Emergency Response) of 2007 was a stalking horse for mining interests - and then coolly fades to black.

More problematically, the film ranges too far and wide, over historical injustices that have been exhaustively dealt with many in other films, including his own A Secret Country in 1985.

His agenda here, of course, is to argue that attitudes have not changed in the 30 years since, which is an irritating hyperbole - white Australia's awareness of aboriginal grievance has come a long way since the 1980s, although Pilger is certainly right to charge governments with inaction.

His methodical dismemberment of the cynical 2007 intervention is a sight to behold, however, and this is a worthwhile social document.

What price is a local equivalent looking at Maori deprivation?

Directors:

John Pilger, Alan Lowery

Running time:

110 mins

Rating:

M (offensive language)

Verdict:

The intent is noble; the execution problematic.

- TimeOut